The Naptime Chef

Are you ready for a One Pan Roast Chicken with Rosemary Potatoes? I’m am! Let me explain…As I’ve shared a lot recently, the past few years have been a journey. One of the brightest spots along the way has been my involvement with Gatherer Entertainment. I’ve talked a bit about it before, but it’s a production company focused on content for women 35+. Given that I’m in that group now it really speaks to me – I definitely look for different internet content than millenials!

To that end, a couple years ago Jenna and I worked together to develop a show that speaks to parents about cooking. It’s all about cooking smarter, not harder and making delicious food for your family. Here’s the first episode and stay tuned because I’ll be rolling out all of them over the next several weeks! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could get this viral so we could get the attention of some networks/platforms who’d like to order more episodes? I’m game to film more if that’s what you want! 

Hello! I’ve been popping into The Naptime Chef Facebook page a lot recently to say Hi in person. This is all new to me because Facebook LIVE didn’t exist when I first started this page way back when. I know, I know, I sound super old when I say that. Anyway, I really just love the more personal interaction with all of you. I’ve been having fun getting into video again and this is a great way to do it without being crazy formal!

So, today I stopped in to talk about the cookbooks I’m currently drawing inspiration from. I always find this time of year a little tricky since it’s cold once day, and quite warm the next. I mean, what’s a cook to do? In the end I usually employ my VERY unscientific method of selecting books by scanning my ROYGBIV bookshelves and pulling the books that speak to me at that moment.

I really focus on the ones that contain the healthy/hearty fare. I’m not quite ready for gazpacho and grilled shrimp yet! At this point in the year a good salad, a pan of roast chicken, and a chilled glass of rosé sounds perfect. I also happen to me semi-training for my first half-marathon on June 2nd. I have got to get on the stick about that, and that includes eating nourishing foods while I train.

Here are the books I selected above. I highly recommend them if you are looking for some new seasonal inspiration!

Food52: A New Way to Dinner : This awesome playbook-style cookbook is lovely to read and the recipes are spot on. It truly provides ALL the tips in tricks for getting one grocery haul and making it into several delicious meals over the course of the week. I also love that the chapters are organized by season. 

I’m so, so excited to share this author interview because I absolutely adore this book! I’m also thrilled to share these fun photos from the book signing in Darien the other day. They the coolest women, just as they sound in the book, and we had a blast. Do you want to win a copy? If so, be sure to sign up for my newsletter and the exclusive giveaway! 😉

The book signing was at Kirby & Company in Darien, Ct.

It’s such a beautiful store and they really went with the rainbow theme of the book!

We are stretching boundaries of Cookbook Club this month for an interview with Clea and Joanna of The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals. I LOVE this book for sooo many reasons – it speaks directly to my organized Virgo heart! To be honest my favorite sections are the pantry and cookbook shelves sections because they obviously are incredibly relevant to me, but I swear this whole volume is amazing and is worth adding to your collection.

TSLN) The Home Edit is a goldmine of organizing advice! How long did it take you develop your organization style?

THE) Thank you! We’re so excited to finally be able to share it with everyone. Although we’re both extremely organized people, we come from different backgrounds. Clea worked in the fashion industry and went to art school, so her approach is very aesthetic-driven. Joanna comes from a traditional organization background, so that’s where a lot of the functionality comes in. From the start, our differences help us work really well together and it’s also been the reason THE signature style is what it is today. It’s definitely a collaboration!

TLSN) What is the most common organizing problem you encounter and how do you solve it? And, to add to that, do we all honestly have to start decanting our spices?!

THE) Too many items and not enough space. It’s why purging the items you no longer want or need is so important. If not, then you are essentially shuffling clutter back and forth— which is not organizing! Basically, we solve the space by viewing it completely empty. It’s the only way to properly decide on storage solutions that will fit the space and make items more accessible. Often times, it comes down to getting creative by maximizing vertical or floor space that was otherwise ignored.

You don’t have to do anything. Our rule of thumb is that organization isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Storage solutions need to fit someone’s lifestyle and space measurements, or else people won’t maintain it. We love storing our spices in glass jars because it saves space and we can’t resist a good ROYGBIV moment. However, some people prefer to keep spices in their original packaging and use a turntable as an accessible solution.

TLSN) What’s the wildest organizing job you’ve ever had to tackle? Spill it! 

THE) We’ve organized an ENTIRE 5,000 square foot house. Every closet, every drawer, every shelf, literally all of it. It took about three weeks to complete, but it looked AMAZING at the end! That’s one of the many things we love about our job—being able to see a space completely transform.

TLSN) What’s next for The Home Edit? I’d like to request a line of ROYGBIV storage containers and labels in perfect cursive, please!

We’re OFFICIALLY launching an NYC team in April, AND we’re so excited to finally share that we will be launching an exclusive collection of products we designed with iDesign, which will be available ONLY at The Container Store in May!”

I have to share this recipe for the Homemade Cinnamon Honey Peanut Butter from Uncle Will. He is a bit of a health champion and swears this is a great protein-heavy snack. It’s easy to make, tastes amazing, and is a delicious dip for fruit or vegetables, or spread on bread. I’ll admit, I’m not usually one for making homemade peanut butter but this is truly amazing!

When I first was given Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals by Lindsay-Jean Hard, I’ll admit that I was skeptical. I like to think I’m good about not wasting too many food scraps. But did I want to start making banana bread with the peels? It turns out, YES! After making a couple of recipes and given this a thorough read through I can honestly say this is a wonderful book for even the most unsure. I promise, it really is about using those scraps we all find ourselves hold after a good vegetable chopping session. Things like beet greens, banana peels, apple cores and more are simply reused to flavorful results.

I’m super excited that Lindsay-Jean stopped by today to chat with us and giveaway a copy of her book!

TNC) This book is so inspired! What first interested you in work with food scraps?

LJH) Thank you! It started on some level when my husband and I were living in Japan. We joined a CSA for the first time, and it was really a period of discovery for me—leaning about new-to-me produce and how to cook it—and it also got me thinking more about where my food was coming from. Knowing that local farmers had grown all of the items in my box made me want to make sure I was honoring that time and effort by putting it all to good use.

Years later, when I was working at Food52.com, the editorial team was brainstorming new columns, and someone suggested one based on the “Garbage” chapter within Gabrielle Hamilton’s cookbook Prune. It struck a chord in me, and I all but insisted that I had to have that column—it was called, you guessed it, Cooking with Scraps. I would hunt through the recipe archives on Food52 for recipes making smart use of underutilized produce parts and other odds and ends, and feature those community members’ recipes (and a few of my own). I learned so much from fellow Food52-ers from that column that I really wanted to share that knowledge with a larger audience, and Cooking with Scraps, the cookbook, was born!

TNC) The banana peel cake is sooo interesting… whatever made you think to use the peels?

LJH) I don’t remember how I first learned that they are edible, but once I figured that out, it was enough for me to assume that they could be cooked, blended, and used like any other fruit purée in a baked good. My first thought was to use the peels in “banana” bread, but I didn’t already have a favorite banana bread recipe to use as a jumping off point, I did, however, know that my grandmother’s banana cake is perfection, so I decided to start there instead, and lo and behold, using banana skin purée in her recipe in place of bananas was an easy (and delicious) substitution.

TNC) Can you advise a cozy winter menu of recipes from the book?

LJH) Right now I’d love to warm up with a bowl of Brothy Beans with Roasted Garlic and Parmesan Rind with a Crispy Breadcrumb Fried Egg on top, and a Vanilla Pod Brandy Hot Toddy to sip on.

TNC) What food scrap do you think will surprise people the most as being flavorful and fun?

LJH) I think banana peels are definitely the most surprising, but second place might go to spent coffee grounds. They still hold a lot of flavor, more than enough to lend their roasty goodness to dishes savory and sweet. In the book, I used them to add texture and flavor to a nut butter, and on Food52, I use them in a French Silk Pie, both directly in the crust with chocolate cookie crumbs, and also to infuse flavor into the whipped cream topping.

TNC) What’s next for your food scrap recipes? There is so much more to do with this and the food sustainability movement!

LJH) Great question! So far I’ve had suggestions for follow up books—Scrappy Cocktails (self-explanatory) and Cooking with Scrappy (scrap-focused recipes for dogs, the person who suggested it has a dog named Scrappy). Both good options, but I’m still open to other ideas. 🙂

Today I’m sharing a great interview with the amazing Ysanne Spevack the author of Vegetable Cakes: The Most Fun Way to Five a Day! Scrumptious Sweets Where Veggie is the Star. If there was ever a more inventive way to bake with vegetables I have never, ever seen it. Between the stunning photography and playful, unique recipes I was blown out of the water. Ysanne is incredibly talented and has had a fascinating career in the food world so far. I am so glad to share this interview with you, I highly recommend picking it up if you are looking for a new, fun way to enjoy vegetables!

TNC) Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is the most unique baking book I’ve ever seen. What first inspired you to dive deep into the world of inventive vegetable baking?

YS) Thank you! My friend Joanna Lorenz suggested we explore this extraordinary idea, and I was inspired to run with it! I am so grateful to her for her suggestion, as the concept of baking sweet cakes with vegetables as the star has sparked so many ideas and enjoyable conversations. I’m very proud of our book, and feel so lucky that I was given the inspiration for this wonderful cookbook, and turned the concept around in my own creativity. Many an evening was spent developing ideas in my head, and then taking these ideas and playing with them in the kitchen. One recipe I tested every night for a month until it was perfect – that recipe is Radish Pavlova. Also, I am grateful to the photographer, Nicki Dowey, for her beautiful photography.

TNC) Did you specify how much of each vegetable you would use in the recipes? Because your recipes don’t just include a sprinkle, they are very vegetable inclusive.

YS)Absolutely – the 46 recipes are all tried and tested, and include specific quantities for every ingredient. The veggies are the star in each and every recipe – take a look at my website for three free recipes from the book!

http://tastecolors.com/vegetablecakes/

TNC) What would you consider one of your most unique recipes and how did you arrive at it?

YS) Probably the first one on my website, Radish Pavlova. It’s a pavlova made without eggs, which is pretty innovative when you consider the main ingredient in pavlova is usually egg whites! The radishes are marinated in rose water, so their peppery bite is presented with a beautiful floral note. The texture is the most important feature of the radishes, bringing a wonderful crispness to the crunchy meringuge base, alongside a creamy coconut topping.

TNC) These recipes don’t squarely fall into any one category of health/vegan/dessert? How do you recommend approaching them when incorporating them into a balanced diet.

YS) This is a baking and dessert cookbook, pure and simple. It’s a modern book, so there’s a lot less refined sugar than more traditional cookbooks, but at its heart, this is a baking book with recipe for cakes, cookies, cheesecakes and pies. People who enjoy Carrot Cake, Pumpkin Pie and Zuchinni Bread will probably enjoy these recipes, it really is a cookbook with mainstream appeal. That said, a lot of vegetarians have picked up on my book, probably because plant-based cuisine is on trend right now.

TNC) What’s next for you? This work is so inspired – we’d love to see more!

YS) Thank you so much! I am in the early stages of writing a non-fiction book based on my recent breast cancer journey. It’s not a cookbook, and isn’t a memoir, but will be a guide for others who are navigating this disease. For this reason, Vegetable Cakes will probably be my last cookbook for a while, although probably not the last one ever, as I’ve been writing cookbooks for so long now. My first cookbook was published by the same publisher, as Vegetable Cakes – Lorenz Books – in 2001, so I’ve been writing cookbooks for nearly 18 years now. It’s nice to be taking a little break from writing recipes for a moment, and reflecting on another aspect of health in a more detailed way for now. But if you’re curious about my cookbooks, there are a lot to discover, so please enjoy the treasure trove while I’m writing my next book, as I’ll no doubt return to writing recipes sometime in the next year or two!

The Enter to Win a Copy of Vegetable Cakes:

1. Leave a comment of a vegetable you’d like to try in dessert!
2. Contest runs from 2/9/19 at 8:30pm to 2/20/19 at 7:00am. Continental US entries only please. Contest winner will be notified via email and have 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen.

(Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Hood Cream. The opinions and photographs are my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make The Naptime Chef possible.)

Snickerdoodle cookies are an all-time holiday favorite in our house. The only trouble is that they are eaten up so quickly and they aren’t great for feeding a crowd. When it comes to having guests over I really prefer something slightly more festive, which is where this Snickerdoodle Cream Bundt Cake comes into play.

The beauty of this cake is that it is incredibly easy to make and serves a crowd. It also tastes just like a snickerdoodle cookie! Honestly, I adore it for many reasons, but my guests really love the creamy texture and cinnamon-sugar flavor. They always ask for the recipe!

Like any classic Bundt cake this one is fairly simple to make. When I make the batter I always use Hood Cream. It blends beautifully and has a lovely, rich flavor. Hood Cream is a high-quality ingredient I can trust to provide the creamy and thick texture you look for in a snickerdoodle cookie. It really takes this recipe to the next level and your guests will love it!

A rich creamy flavor and thick texture is one of the hallmarks of the Snickerdoodle cookie, and the Hood Cream really delivers on that when I bake it.